


Comforts and Distractions

by mautadite



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat, the frozen wilds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21850069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: Instead of asking what she would like to (if Aloy is okay, what had happened up there) Vala simply says,“Tell me what you’re thinking about.”
Relationships: Aloy/Vala (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Comforts and Distractions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serie11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/gifts).



> The night before the Proving, when Vala asks Aloy what she thinks of the lodge, if Aloy replies, “Too soft,” Vala will say that not all comforts are bad.
> 
> Happy Yuletide! <3

By the time Aloy returns from speaking with CYAN, Vala’s little fire is a blaze, devouring the kindling like any other beast of nature would devour its prey. Hunting was a success; a fox towards patching the rent in her overcoat, two raccoons for their bones, and a boar for the meat. Varga had cheerfully helped her skin and gut the first two, but leaves her to her own devices for the third.

“The Banuk have these weird superstitions about boar’s blood and the weapons you use to hunt machines,” she says, cradling one of her own beloved spears as she pampers its already sickeningly sharp edge. “The wildness of the animals infecting the blue light, and all that.”

“If it’s weird, then why do you care?” Vala says, throwing her a grin as she puts several strips of the boar on the rack near the fire. He had been a hulking, snorting fellow; it took the work of five arrows and a merciful knife to the throat to send him to meet the gods of this land. He will provide them with meat for many days.

“As long as I’ve been here?” Varga laughs her tinkling laugh, the one that’s somehow still deep and comes from her belly. “It’d be strange if a few Banuk customs _didn’t_ rub off on me. They might be a little boring in the weapon department, but they’re kinda persuasive.”

Vala chuckles, and makes herself comfortable on one of the logs she’d arranged close to the fire. She’d made their camp a little ways off from the rest of the tents, up against an outcropping of rocks that would make good shelter from the snow and ice and wind. She burrows through her pack, looking for her spices and the utensils she’ll need to prepare them for the meat. This far away from the Nora Valley, into lands that grow so cold and earth that knows the song of ice better than the tune of water, she’d had little luck finding the herbs that are familiar to her: ginger-root and shaddock and mint. 

But there are other spices to be found; Ikrie had told her of a few in one of the rare moments that Vala had been able to pull her out of her own thoughts in the days before they parted ways. She sits with her mortar and pestle and a small collection of fragrant roots and herbs, and something that Varga said comes back to her.

“You’ve been up here in the Cut for a couple years, right? Do you miss your home?”

Silence for a moment, as Varga pauses the slide of the whetstone on the tip of her spear.

“I mean… yeah, sure I do. But when you live a trader’s life like Pops and I do, you learn to make anywhere…” She thinks, tapping her lips. “Well, not home, because there ain’t exactly a replacement. But just home enough. You know?”

Vala, who on all the long journeys she’s been with Aloy – to desert plains that confound the eyes, to great lakes suffused with blue, to mountain peaks that choke breath – has never seen anything that makes her heart clench like the valley of the Nora, knows.

This is when Aloy returns, stomping through the snow down the incline, shaking white flakes out of her flaming hair. Her cheeks are tinged with a lively pink from the cold.

“Hey Aloy,” Varga greets her with a grin, getting to her feet as Aloy sits next to Vala. “My girls still treating you well?”

Aloy gives her peculiar laugh that’s more teeth and mirth than it is sound. “As well as I treat them. And I haven’t heard any complaints.”

“Good to know!” Varga tips her spear to them, and starts trudging back to her own fire.

Vala turns to Aloy, mischievous grin in place.

“Your girls, huh?” she asks, like she does every time she hears Varga and Aloy have that exchange.

Aloy rolls her eyes.

“Well, I _do_ get around,” she replies, like she does every time, her smile slashing across her face. “How’d hunting go? Not bad, I’m assuming by this spread.”

“Yeah, we should be set for the next week at least. And I’ve got some extra furs, if you need to do any mending.”

“I might take you up on that.”

But she doesn’t move just yet. She leans back on the log, hands braced, staring half into the fire that Vala had made, half into the distance. Vala continues to grind the roots and herbs to a paste, her nose beginning to prickle as the spicy fragrance rises. The said and the unsaid hang about in the air like hoarfrost. 

After Aloy had emerged from the Sacred Mountain, duty and knowledge making her shoulders stiff with responsibility, but also renewed determination and stubbornness… it had been days before she would talk, _really_ talk about what had happened in there. And now here in Banuk lands, when everything was settled and Aloy had told her that she was going back to speak to CYAN, Vala had assumed that it would be much of the same. Aloy needs time, and Vala has never been selfish about giving it.

So instead of asking what she would like to (if Aloy is okay, what had happened up there) Vala simply says,

“Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

Aloy blinks. The snowfall is mostly over, but a few stray flakes had drifted down when Vala wasn’t looking, and they decorate Aloy’s brow anew. She shakes her head, laughing shortly.

“What am I _not_ thinking about?” Her honey-hazel eyes trace the sky. “Trust. Devotion. Sacrifice. Aratak. Varl.”

Vala cocks her head, the pestle stilling. It’s strange to hear her brother’s name in this moment, but after a few seconds of thinking, it’s clear why Aloy’s mind had run on him. They are close, she and Varl, but not especially so, a sheen of competitiveness perpetually blanketing their relationship. But they are each their mother’s children, to the core. The connection is a string, and Vala grabs at it, tugs it.

“Aratak seems to be taking it well. As well as he can be expected to, at least. And Varl would have done the same in my case, had it come to the worst. He would have been strong.” 

“Yeah, I know he would have.” Aloy’s voice is surprisingly short; almost a snap. She seems to notice this right after the words have left her mouth, and her expression softens and stiffens all at once. “Sorry. I don’t like thinking of it. Of you… not here.”

Vala rests the mortar on the ground, and slides across the log until their thighs are touching. They’re both heavily covered with furs to protect against the wind and the chill, but Vala still feels the point where they are connected, feels Aloy give an answering nudge. She raises her fist and grazes her knuckles sharply across Aloy’s cheekbones; a love-tap.

“Then don’t think of it, silly.” Her hand drops to Aloy’s shoulder, and she squeezes it. “If it gives you comfort to know that I _am_ here, then think of that instead.”

Aloy doesn’t look at her, but she does laugh, very softly. In all the months Vala has known her, been her friend and then been something more, Aloy’s never shown herself to be a very demonstrative person. Vala herself isn’t. So it’s something of a warm, pleasant shock when Aloy turns to her, still saying nothing, but rests her hand on Vala’s ribcage above her furs, right on the worst of her wounds from the Proving. They still pain her sometimes, especially when it’s cold, but she doesn’t feel anything like that now. She just feels warmth, and quiet affection, and they sit there for several moments, just looking at each other.

Vala finally breaks the silence with a smile.

“Next thing you’ll be raising your hand higher, saying you want to feel my ‘heartbeat’.”

Aloy bursts out laughing.

“Nah, give me some credit. I’d be _way_ smoother than that.”

And she proves it by leaning across to give Vala a long, slow kiss; a kiss that has all her gratitude, all her amusement, all her love. 

When they pull apart, Aloy goes to get the extra furs, and sits back down next to Vala to mend her things. Vala continues to grind her spices, and when it’s ready, she rubs it down across the boar meat that she already has prepared. The fire continues to blaze bright, slicing through the cold while they sit together, in a place that’s home enough.


End file.
